Wes Streeting hails head of London hospitals 'busting' through waiting list backlogs as he unveils NHS reforms

Wes Streeting hailed the head of a London NHS trust “busting” through waiting list backlogs as he unveiled sweeping reforms for the health service.

The Health Secretary cited the work being done by Matthew Trainer at Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Trust which he stressed had been “in and out of special measures” and the headlines for years.

“It now has an outstanding leader in Matthew Trainer who is leading a brilliant team who are doing national leading work,” he told Times Radio.

The east London trust was now recognised as one of the fastest improving in the country, he added.

“They are busting through backlogs using reformed ways of working in a way that puts them at the head of the pack,” Ilford North MP Mr Streeting stressed.

“That is what oustanding leadership delivers.

“It’s not unreasonable to expect outstanding leadership in a service as important as the NHS.”

He announced a new college of leadership and clinical management to drive up standards among health bosses.

“Where they are outstanding, we will give them more freedom, more flexiblity, more power and control,” he added.

“And where they are falling behind we will hold them to high standard.”

He later told Sky News how Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Trust had previously had a “merry-go-round” of senior managers and had been known as a “troubled trust” but had now been turned around.

Under the country-wide reforms, failing hospitals will be named and shamed in league tables and NHS managers sacked if they cannot improve patient care and take control of finances.

Mr Streeting was due to tell leaders at the NHS Providers conference in Liverpool there “will be no more rewards for failure” as he sets out a package of measures aimed at tackling poor performance.

Successful health bosses will be given financial and career incentives to go into struggling trusts to improve them.

NHS trusts can expect to be ranked on a range of indicators such as finances, delivery of services, patient access to care and the competency of leadership.

However, NHS leaders hit back at the moves, saying it could demoralise staff and accused ministers of “falling for the appealing notion of a magic productivity tree which will make the NHS more efficient just by shaking the magic tree harder”.

Under the Government plans, persistently failing managers will be replaced and turnaround teams sent into trusts that are running big financial deficits or offering patients a poor service.

NHS trusts could be banned from using agencies to cover staffing gaps such as healthcare assistants and cleaners, in a bid to cut the £3 billion a year spent on agency workers.

The Department of Health said there is currently little incentive for trusts to run budget surpluses as NHS trusts are unable to benefit from them, but that will now change, with top-performing trusts given more of this cash.

A new pay framework for very senior managers will be published before April next year, with those who do well given financial rewards.

The deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery, said the scale of the challenge facing NHS leaders was “huge” and they were “pulling out all the stops to boost productivity while delivering tough efficiency measures”.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said “the prospect of more ‘league tables’ will concern health leaders, as these can strip out important underlying information.